George Jarvis Lyrics

Tanner Family Line 

Here is a gem from the Nellie McArthur Gubler Collection at BYU Special Collections. [1] This was a double-sided sheet, with a poem on each side. [2] Evidently this was copied by one of George Jarvis's grandchildren. The poem doesn't always scan, but it does tell us more about the family's love for poetry and music. 

Grandfather Jarvis' Song. 

God Plans It All.
1st Life is not always pleasant,
It is not always pain,
It is not always sunshine,
It is not always rain. 

2. The cup must have its bitters, [3]
Its portion too of sweets,
For thornes [sic] as well as roses
Are waiting for feet.
For God plans it all,
God plans it all. 

3. For God in mercy has portioned,
The cup that we have drawn
He knows how much to send us
Of sunshine and of storm, [4]
He fits us for each burden
That we may have to bare [sic],
The strong must take the greater
The weak the lighter share,
For God plans it all,
God plans it all. 

Notes. 

[1] Nellie McArthur Gubler Collection, BYU Harold B. Lee Library, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, MSS 7551, Box 13, Folder 9. 

[2] I did not get a copy of the other poem. 

[3] Bitters is an ingredient in certain alcoholic drinks. George Jarvis probably would have been most familiar with the British Navy's use of bitters in pink gin. 

[4] Here are a few thoughts on the topic by C.S. Lewis. (The Problem of Pain.)

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 5 of 5

My son Frank came to Mackay to live and I put him in the drug store to help me. Herbert Jr. also came to Mackay. He wanted to get out of Ogden, so he located at Malad Idaho. He started in Malad and picked up a wonderful business. My wife Ruby had been ailing for some time. She had had one operation. She was not getting any better, so we moved her back to Salt Lake. I helped out in Church as a ward teacher, and I was put in as a member of the Sunday school board. Apostle Ezra Taft Benson ordained me to a seventy, Nov. 16th, 1947. 

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 4 of 5

I was doing well in Idaho, but we thought we would be better off if we moved back to Salt Lake City. I bought a nice home at Ucon, I sold it and the Drug store and we moved back to Salt Lake City. I went to work, we bought another nice home in Salt Lake on Princeton Avenue and we prospered there. We met friends and started to go to parties, some of these friends were all right. I was never one to drink and carry on though. About 1923 I bought a drug store at Ogden. I done very well. I eventually started a new store in the residential section, worked hard, made money, but it seemed there was always someone living with us. We had a wonderful home, plenty of rooms and had a houseful all the time.

I got into the machine business and was really taking in the money. Of course, I had to have help, and I put these boarders to work and paid them good salaries. In those days, food was cheap. I remember I bought large hams, 17 cents per lb. It took plenty to keep up the house and business. I was making money, but just couldn’t be every place at once, sold the 5 point drugstore and got rid of the other store and disposed of my businesses, and went to California and stayed all winter.

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 3 of 5

I wanted to help as much as possible, so I went to work for the Western Union Telegraph as a messenger. From the first I done well. I averaged $5.00 a day tips, which was big money those days, and from 5 to 60 dollars a month wages. My brothers went to school and my mother went to work in the Salt Lake Temple. I often think what this meant to both of us, and I thank god for this mother for she was a jewel among women. She started me on the road to success and Church, and I will never forget some of the things she told me. I want to relate an incident that happened. She was not well and one day, the President of the Temple and one of his counselors administered to here, and in the prayer she was told she would be shown what to do to regain her health. One afternoon I came home, she had boiled some potatoes. I noticed she had trouble in peeling them. I said “mother, why don’t you cook them longer”. Her answer “this is the way I was told to do”. By obeying that simple remedy, she was instantly cured and worked in the temple for 42 years – first 20 years not a day was lost when the temple was open.

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 2 of 5

In entering New York, we saw the statue of liberty and landed at the dock six and a half days from Liverpool. It took five and a half days from New York to Salt Lake City. We went to stay with my sister, Fanny Parker, then I went to live with the Charlie Eleason Family at Millville Utah. I stayed at Eleasons for five and a half years, and had many experiences that were new to me. I set traps for wild animals, muskrats, mink, wild cats, coyotes and Mountain Lions. For the bigger animals I used to get help to set the traps at home, for they were so big. I carried them down to the pastures set.

One morning I rode my horse to the pasture when in the middle of the dam, I ran into 3 Mountain Lions. The horse gave one snort and whirled, jumped a 4 wire fence and raced for home. Mrs. Eliason said to her husband there is something wrong, Herbert doesn’t ride his horse like that. He ran to the corral, jumped the poles and stopped. I was still on his back. Another morning I went to the traps and found that a mountain lion got in one of the traps and had gone up the canyon. I was not well and the folks, they said I better stay home. Three young fellows took after it. It had dragged the pole seven miles. They shot it and skinned it. The skin measured 7 ½ feet over the back from foot to foot.

Autobiography of John Herbert Wessman, Part 1 of 5

Many thanks to Wessman cousin Dave Clawson, who sent this history. It includes lots of new and amazing information about the family.

John Herbert Wessman, born Oct. 14, 1882, Goteborg Sweden. Experiences of my life from the age of three years on.

It was meant for me to live and to come to this land of liberty that is blessed above all other lands of the earth. I have had many unusual experiences and I am grateful to my Father in Heaven that my life has been spared and I suppose it was to be. I had the raising up of a wonderful mother and thank God for this. If I can live an honorable life and graduate with honors in a life to come --in a life hereafter, I owe it mostly to the training of my dear mother.

At the age of three years there was a terrible epidemic of diphtheria. My older brother and sister died with it. Mother left me with a young girl to get medicine for me. I was choking and would have died but she picked me up by the feet and shook me. This broke the membrane in my throat and I recovered well thereafter. There was no diphtheria vaccine and it was almost sure death to have it.

The Mayflower Passengers: The Second Generation

The descendants of John Tanner (b. 15 August 1778, d. 13 April 1850) trace their ancestry back to Mayflower passengers, Francis Cooke (b. abt. 1582, d. 7 April 1763), his son John Cooke (b. abt. 1606, d. 23 November 1695) and Richard Warren (b. abt. 1579, d. 1628).  Documentation on the first generation passengers is scanty due, in part, to the time period involved but also to the circumstances of their arrival. However, documentation of the succeeding generations is much more complete.

Although there are literally hundreds of different family trees online that show different information about these early families, the differences are only due to a lack of reference to the long accepted and documents sources. In the case of the ancestry of the John Tanner connection to the Mayflower Passengers, there is no controversy or question about the details of his pedigree.[1]

John Cooke married Sarah Warren (b. abt. 1614, d. aft. 15 July 1696) on 28 March 1634 in New Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts.  The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plimoth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith.[2]

John Cooke and Sarah Warren Cooke had five children, all girls.  The following dates come from the set of books cited as follows:

Kellogg, Lucy Mary, Edna W. Townsend, and Robert S. Wakefield. Mayflower Families Through Five Generations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., December 1620. Plymouth, MA: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1975.

Their daughters were:

• Sarah (b. abt. 1635, d. 1713)
• Elizabeth (b. abt. 1635, d. 6 December 1715)
• Hesther (Esther) (b. 16 August 1650, d. 1672)
• Mary (b. abt 1652, d. between 26 April 1708 and 25 January 1714/15)
• Mercy (b. 25 July 1654, d. 21 November 1733)

The John Tanner family descendants came through the daughter Mary.

Selected Bibliography

Ancestry.com. Mayflower Births and Deaths, Vol. 1 and 2 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

Ancestry.com. Mayflower Deeds and Probates, 1600-1850 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. The Mayflower Descendant: A Quarterly Magazine of Pilgrim Genealogy and History. Boston: Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1899.

Landis, John Tannehill. Mayflower Descendants and Their Marriages for Two Generations After the Landing Including a Short History of the Church of the Pilgrim Founders of New England. Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co, 1972.

Terry, Milton E., and Anne Borden Harding. Mayflower Ancestral Index. Plymouth, Mass: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1981.

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[1] Kellogg, Lucy Mary, Edna W. Townsend, and Robert S. Wakefield. Mayflower Families Through Five Generations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., December 1620. Plymouth, MA: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1975.

[2] Wikipedia: Plymouth Colony

The picture of Plymouth Plantation is from a vacation to Massachusetts last year. ATT.

Summary of "From Men to Boys: LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices" (Hartley, 1996)

John the Baptist gives the Aaronic Priesthood to Joseph Smith.

After a Young Women lesson on the Priesthood, a newer member of the Church asked a question that I couldn't answer, so I looked up the answer and sent her an email. Since an understanding of this change could be helpful in understanding our family history, here's a summary of what I found, and I attempted to keep the description fairly simple.

* * *

I appealed to a historian friend, and he provided a link to an article in the Journal of Mormon History by William Hartley called "From Men to Boys: LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829-1996." Hartley did the research for the article under the direction of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

One of the central principles of the Church is the belief in continuing revelation. The priesthood was restored to Joseph Smith. He received revelations, such as Doctrine and Covenants 20, setting up the basic structure of the Church. Subsequent church leaders have received additional revelations adjusting the practices for the needs of the time.

As Hartley notes in his article, the change from adults serving as deacons, teachers, and priests to boys preforming the duties of those offices was due to a number of factors.

First, it was caused by changes in missionary work and temple worship. Missionaries had to be elders (Melchizedek Priesthood) to go through the temple, so after their missions they would not be available to be ordained to the duties of the Aaronic Priesthood. This happened around the time the first temple was built in Utah Territory (1877).

Next, service in the Aaronic Priesthood was seen as a way to prepare boys for their missions.

Third, it became way to train the young men to be lay ministers (elders, high priests, bishops) in their adulthood. By the 1870s, boys as young as ten were ordained as deacons to take care of some of the basic needs of the wards, preparing the buildings for services, delivering food and firewood to the poor, etc.

During the Progressive Era (decades surrounding 1910) with its focus on the needs of children (child labor laws, the building of playgrounds, etc.) the structure was put in place that we would generally recognize as current practice with boys being ordained as deacons, teachers, and priests, and being given certain responsibilities. But despite the 100-year-old practice, we are used to having grown men serving in the duties of the Aaronic Priesthood, especially in smaller wards or student wards.

Since the needs of our young people continue to change, the program will undoubtedly continue to change under the direction of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. We saw this last year as the age for missionary service changed. 

As Hartley notes in closing:

Because General Authorities have restructured Aaronic Priesthood work every twenty to thirty years (1849, 1877, 1908, 1928, and the 1960s) to meet changing realities and as inspiration dictates, we can expect further adjustments. International growth, new social demands, and new generations of young people no doubt will cause additional pragmatic reshapings of priesthood practices to better bless both the Church and those ordained to Aaronic Priesthood offices.